Discussion:
| Translation of Heraldic Nomenclature |
| argent |
= |
silver, represented by white in print or paint |
| barry |
= |
barred horizontally |
| chevronel |
= |
a chevron, but half the width |
| gules |
= |
red |
| nebuleé/nebuly |
= |
undulating, wavy |
| or |
= |
gold, represented by yellow in print or paint |
| sa |
= |
sable = black |
| armed foot |
= |
the foot of a suit of armor |
| in the sun |
= |
shining |
The first, and major, point to make is that James BLOUNT's shield, illustrated
above, is "impaled," that is, it represents two coats of arms (and
two crests). Usually, and as in this case, the husband's coat of
arms is on the dexter half and the wife's on the sinister half (dexter
means right — orientation in heraldry is always in reference to the bearer
of the shield, not the observer, so the dexter side of the shield is on
the left in the illustration above). The complete blazon (description)
for Capt. James BLOUNT's coat of arms would be:
| Barry nebuleé of six, or and sa, for Blount; impaled
Or, three chevronels gules, for Clare. |
As for the illustration itself, I strongly suspect the artist had no
knowledge of heraldry because they've managed to turn six wavy bars into
three strings of beads or whatever you want to interpret the vines with
berries on them to be. Arms that are "barry nebuly" are not common.
Parker (1894) mentions two coats of arms that are "barry nebuly of six"
(viz., BLOUNT and DOLSEBY), then gives an uncolored image of a shield
demonstrating the form:
Note that "nebuly" (wavy) refers to the bars themselves and not
to the wavy lines separating the alternating colors as some have erroneously
stated in describing the BLOUNT arms.
Here is another example of barry nebuly, from Parker (1894), of the
"Company of Staple Merchants," which is:
| Barry nebuly of six argent and azure; on a chief gules a lion passant
guardant or... |
The Association of Amateur Heralds didn't have an image specifically
of the CLARE coat-of-arms, but they do have one of the RAVENSBERG coat
of arms:
| Or (gold), three chevrons Gules (red). |
which is similar to the CLARE arms. Technically, a single chevron
should be one-fifth the width of the shield and multiple chevrons (viz.,
chevronels) should be half the width of a chevron (i.e., one-tenth
the width of the shield). In practice, many do not distinguish the
chevronel as a separate entity, and the width of the single or multiple
chevrons is arbitrary (and thus left to the artist).
The remainder of the illustration of James Blount's coat-of-arms (the
leaves, flowers, flourishes, etc.) is flamboyance on the part of the artist;
it has nothing to do with heraldry. |
